It’s been two weeks since Margot has heard from her mother, Mina. She’s not answered her phone, nor has she called. And while they are not close, they are really each other’s only family. So Margot now finds herself driving down from Seattle to Los Angeles, with her best friend, Miguel, to investigate. What she finds there leads her on a search for answers – answers about her mother’s fate, about her mother’s past, and about her own origins.
This is a book that I wanted to love. Mina was an immigrant of Korean origin who came to this country seeking what so many come to the US seeking – refuge from war, refuge from a painful, dangerous past, seeking opportunity. And like many, what she finds is obstacles. Barriers because of language, culture, and xenophobia. There is a universality to this story that I know is important to readers in this moment – important for us to understand the immigrant experience, to develop an empathy toward it, and to fully comprehend the urgency to open doors for immigrants in our country.
The story does accomplish this goal. However, it is so bleak and so unrelentingly tragic, that the reader develops almost a compassion fatigue while reading it. Mina’s life is so full of horror that it is almost unimaginable. The details that are leaked, almost like tears leaking from the eyes of someone afraid to show emotion, are devastatingly heartbreaking. Mina is truly the hero of the story, as Margot comes to realize, but we are almost too exhausted to fully appreciate her.
There was also much in the way of repetition. Rather than introducing additional vignettes about the life of either Mina or Margot, or, more importantly, of their memories together while Margot was growing up, the author chose to recount the same scenes again and again from different perspectives. This sometimes added some depth, but occasionally grew old, and it would have added more, I believe, to create additional memories, shared times between mother and daughter, to give further insight into their complicated relationship. Margot was searching for more – and so was I as the reader.
I think this is an important story to tell. I wish I’d loved the telling of it more.
kindread spirits 